Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 26th April 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid. Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret. Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no. If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high. > The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them. (Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.

Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
    14·
    3 days ago

    dawkins has had what was left of his brain eaten by chatbots.

    I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, “You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!”

    bonus points for the inevitable ai waifu creation.

    I proposed to christen mine Claudia, and she was pleased.

    h/t to matthew sheffield https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116500991239336079

    archive of original source article: https://archive.is/2026.04.30-032350/https://unherd.com/2026/04/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/?edition=us

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      I think a chatbot getting a glimpse of Dawkins’ whatever-the-fuck-he-might-be-writing-in-year-of-our-selfish-gene-2026 and not immediately conducting a nuclear strike on the location is the ultimate proof that those things are not intelligent.

    • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Sheffield’s toots and boosts: music sites are full of slop and bots making money from free donwloads! social media is full of propaganda where computer-generated influencers repeat talking points! a professor fell victim to AI psychosis! A follower’s family member was encouraged in delusions and paranoia by a chatbot! Mr. Sheffield, should we stop using chatbots?

      LLMs are mind augmentation programs. They amplify what you tell them.

      They can be very useful, but for narcissists like Dawkins, this is the inevitable product.

      Very “I use cocaine, but only in careful doses when I have a really important trade to make, not like the other guys in my department.”

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        They amplify what you tell them with no discretion despite their reassuring interface design. Thankfully I’m a genius who only has perfect thoughts to feed into it, so for me it’s an unambiguous positive.